Opera is out with its latest browser for Windows and Linux, featuring
improved security to help spot phishing sites more easily
and native support for Scalable Vector Graphics .

Jon von Tetzchner, CEO of Opera, said the latest version of the browser
displays a security information field that is automatically activated when
you visit a secure Web site. It then indicates the level of security (1-3)
and the certificate owner of the site.

"This allows people to get an extra way to check if a site is for real,"
he said, and "allows users to better evaluate a site's trustworthiness and
minimize the risk of being subjected to online fraud, such as phishing
attacks."

The release of version 8 has also ushered in Opera's voice-activated
browser, which uses XHTML+Voice within IBM's WebSphere Multimodal Environment.
The feature is designed to allow a user to navigate the Internet with voice
commands.

The browser includes small screen rendering (SSR) technology, which adjusts Web content to fit virtually any screen or window size.

The latest version for Windows is available in English, German, Dutch
and Polish, with more languages to follow. The Linux version is available in
English, also with more languages to come. A beta version of Opera 8 for Mac
(English) is also available today.

But company officials said they expect the most obvious feature to still
be the speed factor with the browsing experience. With more than 12 years of
coding trial and error under their belts, developers for Opera have come up
with a rendering engine that they said is designed to display the text of
the page as quickly as possible.

Plus, Opera offers quick navigation with keyboard shortcuts and mouse
gestures, and more efficient surfing, such as the option to open all your
favorite pages at once.